BY SULTAN ABA-WARRI
After winning the Tigray war, PM Abiy Ahmed has proved that he is not only a great politician but also a military strategist. What matters is how PM Abiy played the game. It is the question of skills-the skills of a game versus the skills of its opponents, the best preparation and demonstrates the most brilliance and discipline is winning it out. Now he has to show how he can be a great prime minister. After the war in Tigray, he must preserve the nation as a whole.
The upcoming election for Ethiopia has at last provided definition for the country’s future path. With this election he has a chance to join the pantheon of politicians who shaped the nation but he is going to need to transfer the campaigning brilliance into a governing strategy.
He now faces three major strategic challenges, all intermeshed. After the post-Tigraian war, the first assignment will be clearly to maintain geopolitical and economic vision for Ethiopia. The second is to serve the country from the resurgent forces of ultra-nationalists and the third is to fashion a new form of federal administration which responds to its new electoral base of less affluent, socially conservative Oromo elites and Abyssinian northern voters.
Abiy must turn his mind and energy to future relationship with Eritrea and other neighboring nations. The threat to the Federal understanding of Ethiopian unity offers him both fresh incentive and cover for the flexibility in the talks with solid opposition parties.
Many political pessimists and skeptics are myopic on the Abyi’s political move. But as a nation and optimist politicians we shouldn’t lose hope at this time. Happily, for Abiy the situation is not entirely hopeless. His military gain gave him a tremendous political muscle to deal with country’s problem. The country’s problems are enormous. They need a systematic treatment and coordination effort with a new way of parties’ alliance. A new alliance not stopped on only parties’ front it should encompass aspiring small-town working and lower–middle class. Once Abiy is the leader of the Prosperity Party (PP), the party of the complacent, the PP’s are now simultaneously need to be the party of the disgruntled.
Today, intolerant and old revolutionary party line guards complaining on Abiy as he is a one nation conservative (Pan-Ethiopian) leader. Their anathema doesn’t have a grain of truth. Again, the parallels are clear. This for PM Abiy will now follow through economic upheaval of and a commitment to youth employment in all parts of the country which many ultra-ethnic nationalists will not enjoy. The best answer to each issue lies in delivering economic prosperity inside the major cities and in the rural parts of Ethiopia. This also offers the best hope to heal the damages done by Tplfites wounds. A small handful of retrograde, old school Tplfites are fallen in the quagmire of history, not to be back forever. No one expected to collapse disintegrated in a matter of days. They have been reduced to remote outposts in Tigray. They have no chance to resist the Ethiopian government. Eritrea and Sudan are not supportive to their insurgency causes. The central tents of dictatorship become more outmoded. They have endured for 27 years, but it is hard to see how they are now imprisoned by the walls they build to protect themselves. It is not only man’s made success; it is the God’s hand that made everything successful. Now their revolutionary democracy is finished and gone! But with the end so near, each hour seems to carry new threat to Ethiopia’s fragile peace. The people of Ethiopia should lend it’s all hands of support to finalize them to their graves. It is time to throw them in the dust bin of history.
They were very pompous in blowing the war trumpet, those dictators no one expected them to collapse disintegrated in a matter of few days. They struggled to gain power for 17 years, thanks to Prime Minister Abiy they collapsed in 17 days of war for good. PM Abiy convincingly articulated his Prosperity Party vision, but after the defeat of TPLF its former vision should be shaped by new political vision. His campaigning brilliance will depict his ability to win the upcoming election. It is my strong belief that not any political party in Ethiopia will stand on the road of his vision. Why? Many political party elites are incompetent, arrogant and don’t have a solid political culture to lead Ethiopia.
In order to keep the nation in whole the following assignment should be fulfilled by current Ethiopian government. In the future path of the political initiative should be taken to de-ethnicization of the political elites and Abyssinian northern voters.
Abiy must turn his mind and energy to future relationship with Eritrea and other neighboring nations. The threat to the Federal understanding of Ethiopian unity offers him both fresh incentive and cover for the flexibility in the talks with solid opposition parties.
Many political pessimists and skeptics are myopic on the Abyi’s political move. But as a nation and optimist politicians we shouldn’t lose hope at this time. Happily, for Abiy the situation is not entirely hopeless. His military gain gave him a tremendous political muscle to deal with country’s problem. The country’s problems are enormous. They need a systematic treatment and coordination effort with a new way of parties’ alliance. A new alliance not stopped on only parties’ front it should encompass aspiring small-town working and lower–middle class. Once Abiy is the leader of the Prosperity Party (PP), the party of the complacent, the PP’s are now simultaneously need to be the party of the disgruntled.
Today, intolerant and old revolutionary party line guards complaining on Abiy as he is a one nation conservative (Pan-Ethiopian) leader. Their anathema doesn’t have a grain of truth. Again, the parallels are clear. This for PM Abiy will now follow through economic upheaval of and a commitment to youth employment in all parts of the country which many ultra-ethnic nationalists will not enjoy. The best answer to each issue lies in delivering economic prosperity inside the major cities and in the rural parts of Ethiopia. This also offers the best hope to heal the damages done by Tplfites wounds. A small handful of retrograde, old school Tplfites are fallen in the quagmire of history, not to be back forever. No one expected to collapse disintegrated in a matter of days. They have been reduced to remote outposts in Tigray. They have no chance to resist the Ethiopian government. Eritrea and Sudan are not supportive to their insurgency causes. The central tents of dictatorship become more outmoded. They have endured for 27 years, but it is hard to see how they are now imprisoned by the walls they build to protect themselves. It is not only man’s made success; it is the God’s hand that made everything successful. Now their revolutionary democracy is finished and gone! But with the end so near, each hour seems to carry new threat to Ethiopia’s fragile peace. The people of Ethiopia should lend it’s all hands of support to finalize them to their graves. It is time to throw them in the dust bin of history.
They were very pompous in blowing the war trumpet, those dictators no one expected them to collapse disintegrated in a matter of few days. They struggled to gain power for 17 years, thanks to Prime Minister Abiy they collapsed in 17 days of war for good. PM Abiy convincingly articulated his Prosperity Party vision, but after the defeat of TPLF its former vision should be shaped by new political vision. His campaigning brilliance will depict his ability to win the upcoming election. It is my strong belief that not any political party in Ethiopia will stand on the road of his vision. Why? Many political party elites are incompetent, arrogant and don’t have a solid political culture to lead Ethiopia.
In order to keep the nation in whole the following assignment should be fulfilled by current Ethiopian government. In the future path of the political initiative should be taken to de-ethnicization of the political spectrum is the first priority. By consolidating the election and by organizing a constitutional assembly we can move to the constitutional review process.
Furthermore, we have to develop institutions of the state that shoulders the problems of Ethiopia. It is also important to sit together for negotiation among Pan-Ethiopian and Ethno-nationalists forces to find a common ground that form political equilibrium in the country.
The negotiation settlement will move the country to more stable and democratic process. Hope that victor’s justice mentality doesn’t work for the Ethiopian current political settlement. We have to assume that the country will continue as one. It was my view that it would be extremely difficult to divide up the country. In my assumption a third or fifth of the population lived outside their ethnic regions. If we broke up, they would be foreigners overnight as it was exercised in the former Yugoslavia and Russia. So, we should try to make the union a real federation.
We are spoiled by the ethnic misunderstanding and polarization. As Desmond Tutu once put it “We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity. I don’t want to oversimplify things – but the suffering of a mother who has lost her child is not dependent on her nationality, ethnicity or religion. White, black, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim or Jew – pain is pain – joy is joy”. No more poison pills to further ethnic division and weakening Ethiopia.
And now it is our turn to sing the song “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles: “Hit the road Jack and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more…”
The Ethiopian Herald 17 January 2021
